


Off Season

by executrix



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen, b7 friday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-07-01
Packaged: 2018-02-06 23:23:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1876428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU version of "Orbit," written for the b7friday challenge, "A Sporting Occasion"--with a little help from The Scottish Play.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Off Season

“I’m bored,” the older woman said. “Let’s have a game.”

“We’ve used up the budget,” the younger woman said, with brisk practicality.

“You mean you spent it on those nighties of yours. All right, not a new game, then. Anyway, the old ones are the most fun. A re-run. We can do it all on one set.”

“A bottle show,” Sinofar said. “Well, we can’t get Travis, back again he’s right off the board.”

“We’ll re-cast. Blake wasn’t much fun,” Giroc said. “Worthy to be a rebel, for to that the multiplying villainies of nature do swarm upon him.” She chortled. “And even if we could find him, he’d play through the whole thing too quickly. Lucky bastard, though.”

“Fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling, showed like a rebel’s whore,” Sinofar said. 

“All right, I’ll make the call,” Giroc said. With the arrangements in place, they settled down to wait. 

“This one’s bound to fail,” said Sinofar (who had rather a soft spot for Blake). 

“He’s no fool,” Giroc said. “And economical! He only has the one, you see, won’t want to throw him away.” 

“Throw him away? That’s just what he’ll do,” Sinofar said. “And without a backward glance. It’s his nature, you see.”

Meanwhile, Avon was browbeating Orac to get the shuttle to escape velocity. 

Giroc waved her hand over a demispherical vessel. The kernels scattered on its bottom swelled with steam. 

“That’s like ‘pawn to king four’ when it comes to playing ‘Death of a Friend,’” she said. 

“Settle down,” Sinofar said. “See what he does next.” 

“Vila!” Avon called. “Help me strip down the shuttle, get rid of the extraneous weight!” 

“Vila weighs seventy-three kilos,” Orac said, getting into the spirit of the game. 

“There’s got to be a way out of this, if I can only find it,” Avon said under his breath, wondering what impulse made him say it out loud.

“That’s the spirit, sonny!” Giroc said. 

“Look at his funny little face!” Sinofar said, as Avon checked the clip in his gun. 

“Vila? Vila? Are you here? I need your help,” Avon said. Vila pressed his hands more tightly to his ears. 

Avon stumbled over something on the deck. 

“That’s your tragic irony right there,” Sinofar said.

“Only tragic if he can’t play through,” Giroc said. 

Avon stood there for a moment. “A bit of plastic couldn’t be that heavy without something embedded in it…” He stashed the gun in the inside pocket of his jacket. Sinofar groaned. 

“Told you,” Giroc said. 

“All right, I was lying before, but this time I really do know what they did. It’s a bit of neutron star material. We’ve got to shift it.”

“You mean you’ve got to shift it. Get stuffed, Avon,” Vila said. 

“Landing in two and a half minutes,” Orac said. 

“Look, I’ve worked out how to get us out of this mess—again-- but I could use a little help,” Avon said, using muscles he’d never known he had to wrest the star chip to the airlock. 

“Go talk to a rock if you’re so clever,” Vila said.

“Well, you see, that’s just the problem…at any rate, we are very much in the same boat, and it won’t do you any good if we can’t fix this together.” 

“That’s not a very strong argument. Never stopped Zen or Orac, or Slave, now, from dumping us right in it.”

Minutes later, they landed, and Vila emerged from his hiding place. 

“You were going to kill me,” Vila said.

“Well, yes, but only if I couldn’t work out a better plan. And I did.”

“And I repeat, you were going to kill me. You know, that thing the Federation keeps trying to do. Whose side are you on, besides yours?”

“Don’t expect me to apologize for not being willing to nobly sacrifice my life for you,” Avon said.

“*He* would have,” Vila said.

Giroc howled with laughter. “That one’s below the belt!”

“The fact that you were hiding in a very small shuttle…where discovery was inevitable…”

“Not in two and a half minutes,” Vila said.

“…suggests that you weren’t willing to nobly sacrifice your life for me. So let’s accept that we’re both merely human?”

Vila stalked away, refusing the proffered hand. 

“That was rather thrilling,” Egrorian said during the post-game show. “I was on the edge of my seat! I’d no idea how it was going to come out!”

“I expected there’d be some more of Avon’s own-goals,” Sinofar said. 

“When shall we three meet again?” Egrorian asked.


End file.
